


"Comment appelez-vous?"

by TheQueen



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Drabble, F/M, Preview, Soulmates AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-05
Updated: 2016-08-05
Packaged: 2018-07-29 12:58:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7685512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheQueen/pseuds/TheQueen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Where Marinette falls in love with ever Adrien she meets until she doesn’t. </p><p> </p><p>  <span class="small">A Miraculous Ladybug!Soulmate AU.</span></p>
            </blockquote>





	"Comment appelez-vous?"

_“Comment appelez-vous?”_

In a world like hers it’s a phrase that carries more weight than most like to admit. A proverbial land field where love and heartbreak are capable of falling within seconds of each other, both a series of bombs that shakes the core of a person no matter how often nor how many times they have fallen.

_“Je m’appelle…”_

This is the world that has taught Marinette how to love. Where a second contains more hope than the soft beats of a pink butterfly wing. Where a person bets a life worth’s of luck on a response that is usually always, always, always wrong.

_“Et vous?”_

Here she is born with a name, a slash of red across her forearm like a forever healing scar that will only settle when she finds the right balm—the owner of her own name.

_“Je suis désolé(e)”_

Some grow to resent their soul marks.

“It’s a leash,” Alya will confide in her. Marinette has never seen Alya’s name, hidden under the length of her jeans or her thick pajama bottoms even in the high of summer. “We’re stuck waiting for this…” she opens her hands, fingers wide as if attempting to grasp something. “And we forget there are more important things than a name.”

Some see it as a guide.

“ _Il m'a conduit à tout_ ,” her mother tells her when she tells her stories of her past, of her home: Hong Kong of the 1970s, a city that no longer exists. “I am glad,” her mother will tell her. Her name sits in the same place as Marinette’s, across the forearm for all to see. “I could not have stayed there.” She tells Marinette after a long day where her shoulders ache from working too long and smiling for anything but customers ache. “I was glad it was a Frenchman more than anything,” she admits after a fight with her father where he spends the night down in the bakery and her mother by the door, waiting for him to come home.

Some see it as a curse.

“We wait,” Adrien will one day tell her in the quiet of their new home after the city has fallen asleep and Plagg and Tikki have hidden themselves away to discuss something they aren’t ready to tell their wielders, “And we wait and we wait. And every time we run into a Marinette or,” he looks at her forearm, no longer the same smarting red it had been since the day she was born, “an Adrien, we fall in love because we’ve been told that’s how its done just to have it broken, over and over again.” He smiles at her, bitter (brittle). “Or we find the right one and still it just ends in heartbreak.”

She will ask him how he can say that now that they had each other.

Adrien smiles at her with the same smile she fell in love with in the rain, “Well… I'm hoping I’m wrong, I suppose.”

She hums in agreement. They are both thinking of his father.

But Marinette ... Marinette had always seen her soul mark as a proof that she was meant to love.

.

The first time she falls in love, she is five.

His name is Adrien.

(His name is always Adrien.)

And he is beautiful.

Four years older with fire red hair and a love for purple things. Purple shirts and purple shoes. Purple streaks in his hair and purple bracelets around his wrists. And always purple sweets. Purple macaroons and cakes covered in purple flowers were his favorites always.

They never talk. She is five and hidden in the corner of the bakery with her coloring books and kindergarten homework and him already so much older and in the third grade. What would she have to say to him that he would find interesting enough to stay? So she decided to wait until she was older. Her sixth birthday was around the corner and that was a number so much bigger than five. Certainly then she would be old enough to be interesting.

But when her sixth birthday comes, Adrien returns to the shop with a lovely blond in his arms and Marinette did not understand the tears on her cheeks.

And this is how Marinette learns of heartbreak.

.

The second time she falls in love, she promises herself to be more guarded, to take things slower. 

She is in fifth grade, hair tied up in ponytails and wearing the first dress she'd ever designed. He smiles to her in the light of the setting sun on the playground near their school, just before their parents arrive to take them away, and promises her one day she'll be one of the best designers in Paris, a designer to rival even Gabriel Agreste and her heart stutters, flutters, and then settles. 

She aches.

Because she knows his name is not her name. Because she knows she will never have him despite the way her heart beats for him. He has found his name. There is a promise ring on his little pinky like all promise rings are made to sit when soulmates are lucky enough to find each other young. And it is not her promise ring. 

She goes home that night and cries.

The next day, when he comes to sit with her at lunch, she runs away.

.

The third time she falls in love, she sees him in a magazine and giggles. It is not real love. She knows this. Here in the glossy pages of her magazine, the beautiful blond boy is safe. He is inconsequential. Adrien is written in beautiful cursive alongside the introduction that tells the readers who this new, beautiful model is and she traces it with one perfectly manicured nail.

 _Ad-ri-en_ , she rolls it off her tongue, lets each syllable sit in the air for just a moment before shattering. Her in the privacy of her room with the beautiful young boy’s face smiling up at her, she fantasizes. She pretends.

What would her life be like with a beautiful boy like that? Would he kiss her good morning every day and every night? Would he keep those special, little smiles only for her? Would he stutter in the face of her beauty the way she knows she would stutter at his? Would he find her beautiful?

 _Yes_ , she thinks. Because she can. Because the Adrien she has created is safe enough to let her heart sing to. He won’t have the wrong name because she won’t let him. Not here. Not in the privacy of her room, in the privacy of her mind.

When her mother calls her down to work, she sets her magazine aside and lets the fantasy carry her through the day, lets her mind conjure up the names of their children and their pets, the way their house will look, and all the things they’d cook together.

When she goes to bed that night, she sleeps with a smile. Her heart flutters and settles. At rest. It has had it’s fun for the day.

 .

When she is fourteen years old, she finds a pair of ladybug themed earrings on her desk and becomes a superhero. There she meets a boy with dark green eyes and soft (too soft) blond hair who smiles like she hung the sun and named the stars. When she asks his name, he gives an alias, slips past all her attempts to find his identity and only smiles when she asks how he can claim to love her without her name. 

"A rose by any other name would smell as sweet," he whispers to her, that same horribly knowing smile painted across her lips. Like he understood something she didn't. Like he knew something about her that she didn't. She feels her cheeks flush. 

"No one can escape fate," she insists and his smile waivers, for just a moment. 

For once his gaze is serious. "We can try."

.

When she is fourteen, her soulmate walks into her class with Chloe on his arm and her name written red and prominent along his collarbone. It takes a few moments for her to recognize him from her magazine. She takes a deep breath, grabs Alya's arm and hisses something like words. "Adrien," she finally chokes out. 

Adrien Agreste looks up at her from his seat with wide, terrified eyes. The teacher stops talking. The class takes an audible breath. But she doesn't pay them any mind. She can't. Instead she shows Adrien her right forearm and waits. He stares and stares, breaks eye contact to look at her arm before he stands, too fast. His chair falls over. Everyone flinches. 

"No," he tells her. There is steel in his voice, but pain in his eyes. And her mind is screaming, _Stopstopstopstopnonononononono_. 

Nino reaches out for him, but he jerks back. Takes one step, two steps away. Away from her. But she can't make her legs move, can barely remember to keep her lungs moving. When he leaves her, she doesn't realize she's crying until Alya brings her close for a hug. 

**Author's Note:**

> So I don't know if I'll ever finish this. I just wanted to post it because it was sad to just see it sit in my drafts. 
> 
> The general premise is in this AU is after a few shenanigans, team building, and confusion, Ladybug learns her name is on Chat Noir's wrist and she reveals her identity. Adrien freaks out and then they have a serious conversation about soul mates and love and Marinette swears to prove her love is real. It would have been a two-three parts long. But I don't have the time to do it justice. Maybe I'll come back to this later when I do and if there are people who want it.


End file.
